When you were called by God,
what did you do?
Did you respond like Ninevah
– an instant change of heart, and turn toward God?
Did you respond like the
fishermen on the shores of Galilee, immediately dropping what you were doing to
obey the call?
Or did you respond like Jonah?
Or did you respond like Jonah?
Jonah, who quite clearly
heard the voice of God telling him to get up and go to Ninevah, to preach against them, because God has
noticed their wickedness.
This might actually be a great idea. Ninevah is the capital of Assyria,
the nation whose mission in life is to destroy God’s people Israel. It’s a good
thing that God has seen their wickedness and wants to put them on notice.
But… it’s hardly safe for
Jonah to go into the middle of that, and, of course, if the Ninevites actually listen to him, and repent… well, then,
God’s going to have to forgive them. God’s going to have to quit avenging
Israel against Ninevah and start being nice to this great big strong nation.
Israel might even lose its exclusivity with God.
This part – the part where God stops avenging Jonah’s injuries and
forgives the bad guys – doesn’t sound so good to Jonah.
So Jonah gets up and goes in exactly the opposite direction. He hops a
boat to Tarshish. He’s going to stay far, far out of the way until God thinks
better of calling him to Project Save Ninevah.
But there’s a storm at sea. It turns out God isn’t letting Jonah get
away. Jonah would rather choose drowning than cooperation, still, but when he
gets himself thrown overboard, God “appointed a large fish to swallow Jonah”
and, essentially, put him in time out.
After three days in the fish, Jonah prays for deliverance from this
miracle, gets spit out onto dry land, and right away, God calls him to go to Ninevah
to preach.
And now (pretty much out of options) Jonah finally obeys God’s call.
Sort of. Dragging his feet the whole way. This is where we picked up the story
this morning. Jonah goes barely far enough into the city to count, preaches one
very short warning – and suddenly all Ninevah hears, and repents, and offers
themselves to God. And God forgives. It’s a miracle!!
A miracle Jonah hates. He sulks his way out of the city, complaining to
God that he knew this terrible
repentance and reconciliation thing would happen, and now God has to be nice to
the bad guys. God tries more miracles, and logic, and empathy, all in the
effort to get Jonah to see that it’s worth loving and reconciling a great city
like Ninevah, but the story ends without Jonah ever admitting there was
anything good about this call from God.
It’s more than a little tragic that Jonah hates and resists his call so
much. The story, as told in the Bible, plays out a lot like a sitcom, but Jonah
himself is miserable the whole time he’s avoiding the call, and the whole time
he’s obeying it.
And for a long time, I thought that’s how it was supposed to be when God
calls. Maybe because it’s traditional in scripture for prophets and heroines to
object that they aren’t good enough, or qualified enough, for the roles God
calls them to, I thought you could tell the call of God in your life because it
would be something you would never ever want to do for yourself: go live the primitive life as a missionary,
nurse the dying in Calcutta, risk getting shot as a modern day prophet – or
even be a monk or a priest. I thought
“call” must be what you wouldn’t do if you had a choice.
It was obvious to me then, that if I felt like I wanted to be a priest,
or a teacher, or a physicist, the call of God could only be to being a nun, or
a Congressperson, or an emergency room nurse – all of which are essential jobs
that nonetheless fill me with dread.
But I was wrong.
Just like Jonah was wrong.
Sometime in my twenties, I heard a friend mention Fredrich Buechner, and
his idea that “The place God calls you to
is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.”
At the same time, I stumbled into a community of people who were, more
or less, living out that idea: people who were meeting deep needs in the world:
food for hungry bodies, gentleness and healing in illness and pain, and creating
beauty, meaning and inspiration in the dry lands of ordinary life.
They were meeting the world’s deep hungers by doing what they loved best
to do – not just as artists or doctors or teachers, but as accountants and
hospital techs and public servants. They were having a wonderful time – not
easy, but joyful – doing things the world really needed. Deepening their own
joy, and sharing God’s joy.
And then it’s easy for me to
imagine why and how those fishermen of Galilee responded to Jesus’ call so
immediately. They responded to joy, or perhaps love. Something about his
invitation triggered delight, or adventure, or hope – or some long, half-understood
desire to catch, to gather people. I
suspect, very strongly, that Andrew and Simon, James and John, looked at Jesus
and saw their own joy – or even better, saw Jesus’ joy in them, in the ordinary
fishing skills they’d already cultivated, or in their unexplored hopes and
dreams. And they dropped their nets, and followed him.
I suspect that the sudden
response and repentance of Ninevah was a response to love, to God’s love, no
matter how badly Jonah preached it. And I suspect that the fundamental problem
of Jonah was that he forgot about joy. That he doesn’t notice that right
through the story, God is inviting him to share God’s joy: God’s joy in the
people of Ninevah, the wonder and delight of sudden reconciliation; God’s joy
in fish, whales, or sea monsters, God’s joy in Jonah himself.
Jonah lets his fear or anxiety
get between him and that joy. His fear
of losing his specialness – if too many other people, strangers, repent and
come closer to God. Or his fear of change – that if Ninevah can be saved, all
the rules and right ways have gone wrong.
For years, my fear of being
wrong kept me from seeing the joy God was inviting me to share in my call to be
a priest. That’s still the fear most likely to keep me from finding the joy in
God’s calls which continue to come, great and small, but anxiety about embarrassment,
about not having enough time, about losing what I have, still keep me,
sometimes, from noticing God’s joy, or my own.
Sometimes I’m still Jonah.
But sometimes, now, I get to be
the fishermen - we get to be the fishermen - dropping tasks and fears
alike to be caught up in God’s joy.
We all have different fears
that get in the way, different joys we’re called
to, but the sharing of joy and
love are always at the center of God’s true call, no matter how or when it
comes.
When you were called by God –
and you were, I promise you – what did you do?
What joy did you share?
And what next joy, what
unknown love, is God calling you to now?
How will you respond today?
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